Introduction

Cultural sustainability in an Australian regional centre: the case of Swan Hill David Nichols Space for a portrait of Kate Darian Smith Lecturer in Urban the co-author. Professor of Australian Planning Studies and HIstory University of Wrap the picture in University of Melbourne front of the text. Then it Melbourne Australia is easy to place to this Australia [email protected] box. k.darian- .au [email protected] Introduction Swan Hill, a small regional city in the north-west of the state of Victoria, Australia, has a range of cultural sustainability issues to face in the 21st century as smaller Australian cities engage with issues of population drift, availability of amenities, economic change affecting both primary and secondary industries and the attitudes both within and outside regional centres towards regional life. Drawing on a major funded study of cultural sustainability in regional towns, this paper will examine Swan Hill’s future resilience in both a historical context and that of other, comparable towns in Australia. Attempts by city fathers past and present to increase and reorient the town’s design and networks are canvassed. Issues of both race and place also factor into Swan Hill’s community and social stability and growth. The establishment of a true sense of uniqueness for Swan Hill may well be, it is contended, the saving of the area; as is continued recognition of its frontier and more recent history. The study takes place in a political environment wherein a minority federal government, supported by rural independent members, is ostensibly renewing a commitment to reinvigoration of regional areas and creation of both new towns and heavily funded infrastructure to increase the size of existing regional towns. Some of the study’s findings are essentially applicable around the world; others are arguably unique only to the city itself. In both strands a snapshot is readily available to outline the problems faced in the interrelated environmental, social and political fields, to prepare small regional cities for an uncertain future. Swan Hill is a city of approximately 20 000 people four hours’ travel (by road or rail; train services operate twice daily) from the capital of Victoria, Melbourne, the nation’s second largest city with a population of 4 million. Drift from country towns and regional centres towards large capital cities has been perceived as problematic in Australia for well over a century. This phenomenon – mirrored in many western nations - is due in large part to the increase in secondary industry in the nation after World War II: an era of large-scale manufacturing which is now passing. At a time when larger Australian cities are seen to be oversized and unsustainable – a key ‘push’ factor for government bodies in particular - numerous methods are in play to create ‘pull factors’ and induce people to either stay in, or move to, smaller centres. This paper takes the case of Swan Hill as an area many see as suffering cultural, social and population decline. In examining past and present remedies, the authors note ways in which Swan Hill is addressing its current problems, and suggest some elements to the town which, despite the validity of its detractors’ complaints, may ultimately see it retain and gain population and resilience. The Rural City of Swan Hill is a local government area incorporating some minor outlying towns. The settlement began as a communications and service town, and prospered for much of the 20th century on irrigation technology – and water from the nation’s largest river, the Murray – which allowed for fruit and wheat production. Like many Australian regional cities and towns, Swan Hill has observed a low growth rate over the 20th century as certain functions once germane to regional centres devolve to the centre and as key developments in the national economy bypass rural towns altogether. This has been the case despite numerous attempts to establish or re-establish Swan Hill in culturally and agriculturally productive ways (for instance, as a wine region specialising in Chardonnay); to define its points of difference and its unique attractions as part of the Mallee region; and to express its importance as both a centre and as part of a network of rural cities within Australia’s habitable area. This paper is an examination of the past and present of Swan Hill, with a view to its viability and cultural sustainability – as well as its more broadly establishable sustainability – as a 21st century community. It discusses Swan Hill as a discrete component of a multicultural nation, and as a small regional centre proactively seeking to forge an identity and a range of new functions within its locale, region and nation. The meaning of community in Swan Hill In March, 2011 the citizens of Swan Hill held their second ‘Harmony Day’, a small festival on the banks of the River Murray calculated to acknowledge the presence and contribution of Swan Hill residents of diverse backgrounds (one-tenth of the city’s population was born outside Australia; Swan Hill has a long-established Italian community, a small indigenous community of under a thousand, and a more recently founded Somali community of similar size, amongst others). Organiser Ross Polglase observed on this occasion that while Swan Hill represented ‘a very diverse society, with many cultural backgrounds’ this was not generally commented upon ‘beyond seeing people may look different’ – much less celebrated [1]. Since its inauguration in 2000, Harmony Day had traditionally been held on Australia Day, a national holiday commemorating (controversially for some) the anniversary of the arrival of British settlers on the continent on 26 January 1788. However, the eleventh Harmony Day was postponed for two months due to an extraordinary near-disaster that for many emphasised the value of co-operation within a small community far more effectively than folk dancing displays. In the second week of January 2011 the Swan Hill region experienced three times the average rainfall for January in the space of 24 hours [2]. Following many years of declared drought through much of Australia’s pastoral lands, severe flooding inundated much of the eastern landmass of Australia. The Murray, which is the raison d’etre for Swan Hill threatened on a number of occasions over a period of weeks to burst its banks at certain points. In a congratulatory column in the local newspaper, the Gazette, Mayor Greg Cruickshank discussed a ‘whole-of-community response’ to the flood threat [3]. Between 70 and 90 000 sandbags were filled by residents [4], and volunteers reinforced or built levees at important locations in the area – such as the historical theme park, the Pioneer Settlement [5]. Cruickshank relayed his enthusiasm for the Swan Hill population’s organised and selfless contributions towards the preservation effort; such as the Country Women’s Association’s assistance in providing sustenance for workers, and those community members who provided a ‘wealth of local knowledge’ aiding in strategies and activities to protect the area from the rising river [6]. Robert Putnam’s notion of social capital within community groups and clubs was actively in play here, and the CWA was not the only local group to organise in defense of a local town. Further examples include, for instance, the Football Club of the nearby town of Nyah Nyah West, 28 km to Swan Hill’s north, which also took the responsibility for constructing sandbag levees [7]. The nation’s (and the state’s) attention was largely focused on much more spectacular and disastrous water devastation in the north of the continent; the state of Queensland experienced unprecedented flood damage at this time and Swan Hill stayed on ‘high alert’ till the danger passed. This may have complicated the feelings of Swan Hill locals over their own experience. It did not, however, change the fact that they had come together as a community to face, and avert, disaster. That the Harmony Day eventually held in March took place on the banks of the Murray was, then, itself important and the mere site was a reminder of the value of community within this small town. Riverside Park – which lies between the town and the river – is similarly a valuable component of the town’s layout, providing a space acknowledging the importance of the Murray River (Australia’s largest) to the town. Created in the 1930s by unemployed men working for sustenance payments, Riverside Park’s creation initiated a change in the way Swan Hill responded to the river. Whereas, for much of the 19th century, the Murray was the principle source of communication and trade between the town and the rest of the world, it had been largely superceded in this role by a railway line, built in 1890. The construction and dedication of Riverside Park created a focus for Swan Hill activities as the town managed and constructed a cultural identity. It – and the nearby Swan Hill Town Hall, constructed in the same decade – were to become the location of a number of important and significant attempts to create new cultural expression and spaces thereafter. Sculpting cultural spaces in Swan Hill A brief historical survey of the pursuit of cultural spaces in Swan Hill since the 1930s is illustrative of the ways in which small communities define themselves as cultural producers and consumers. Though some major changes have taken place in the flavour of the cultural expression in the last 70-80 years, the Swan Hill case reinforces the value of recent models of sustainable communities as discussed by Manzi, Lucas, Lloyd-Jones and Allen in their overview of ‘social sustainability’; whether it be within the ‘Russian doll’ explanation of sustainable development (in which ‘society’ joins ‘economic development’ to ‘environmental limits’) or the ‘strong local culture and other shared community activities’ element to the ‘Egan Wheel’ of eight elements constituting a sustainable community [8].

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